Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
20th August 2017

Consecration of Our Parish to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

To Thee, O Immaculate Mother of God, do we have recourse in this supreme hour of mankind's need, amidst such storms indeed as have never been known, shaking Mother Church to her very foundations. Thou, who standing by the foot of the Cross, didst once share so closely in the sufferings of thy Divine Son, with what compassion art thou not moved today for the suffering of His Mystical Body, the Church!

Amidst so many betrayals, may it please Almighty God following an ancient example, to prepare this Parish of ours, a small band of rebuilders, who being truly aware of their own frailty turn today to thee, Virgin most powerful, Help of Christians. For distrusting in our own strength, so little before the magnitude of the task entrusted to us, we wish to place ourselves under thy motherly and powerful protection, O Virgin who art terrible as an army arrayed in battle, to whom from the beginning it was promised thou wouldst tread upon the head of the serpent. Amidst those dangers hanging over our heads, we beg and beseech God, Who has deigned to call us to the service of His Church, that He deign to seal and confirm our calling through Thee, O Ark of the Covenant!

And so, O Immaculate Virgin, before thy Throne of Grace today we prostrate ourselves, and desiring to increase thy praise and glory so that to the filial love of Christ thy Son towards thee, O most sweet Mother of ours, we may here and now add our humble contribution to thee, beneath the most special title of thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. We irrevocably consecrate our Parish with all its spiritual family. In order that thou should be now the Lady and Queen of our Parish, by a perpetual donation into thy hands, we offer and we entrust our possessions and our homes that they may truly belong to thee: our bodies and also our souls, indeed, our whole selves we hand over and consecrate, that thou mayest ever have us ready at thy command. The souls also entrusted to us we hand over to thee, that thou mayest guard them beneath thy motherly care. Finally, we relinquish all that we may be wholly thine, O Queen of Apostles!

Thus, our Parish is now wholly thy domain. Hold it so firmly, O Tower of David, that it may never turn from the right path. O Virgin most faithful, keep every member most unshakably attached to it.  Guard our Faith virginally intact, O Virgin most pure, thou who hast received the power to crush all heresies throughout the entire world. Keep for the Church O thou who art Full of Grace, her Sacrifice of the Mass according to the ancient and venerable Roman rite, sure conveyor of Grace, and to it keep us most faithful. Cause to flourish within us, O Queen of all Saints, the holiness of the priesthood, of religion, of the family. Guard, O Mother of Divine Grace, our Parish as a fruitful and ever-living branch of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Obtain for us the grace, O Mother of the Church, whereby we may from day to day become in the hands of God an instrument more docile and more apt for the saving of the greatest number of souls. That we may know that thou hast heard our prayers, O Virgin most Clement, send us those many workers whom the Divine Lord of the Harvest calls into His mission-fields.

Grant us, finally, O Mother of the Sovereign High Priest, the grace by which to work for the restoration of the Catholic priesthood and thereby for the splendour of the priestly Soul of Christ, illuminated by Whose rays may persons and families and nations at length obtain the establishing of His Kingdom.

Finally, we promise thee, O Queen of Martyrs and Confessors that we shall labour until our last breath for the restoring of all things in Christ, for the spreading of His Kingdom, and for the preparing of the glorious triumph of thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, O Mary.